Google offers webmasters a variety of tools to make the most of their web sites and to understand what's happening on the site. This information helps webmasters make improvements to their web sites so they're optimized for search engines.
Don't confuse Google Webmaster Tools with AdSense, AdWords or Google Analytics. It's a free service for people managing web sites, whether it's a personal or a small business web site. To get started with Google Webmaster Tools (www.google.com/webmasters/tools/), all you need is a Google Account and verify your web site. If you don't have a Google Account, sign up.
After signing in to Google Webmaster Tools, you'll see your Dashboard with the top search queries, craw errors, links to your site and Sitemaps. You can download most of the data for reviewing and sharing with others.
Highlights of Google Webmaster Tools
Using Google Webmaster Tools may help improve your web site's visibility in Google Search. But more importantly, tools will help you find and identify web site problems and give you detailed data about your web site.
- Crawl Info: Googlebot visits your web site and reports back any problems it has crawling your site that prevents Google from indexing your web pages.
- Indexing: Identifies the pages that Google includes in its index.
- Traffic: Google data shows what pages link to your site and the top search queries that send people to your site.
- Site Map: Submit a sitemap file to Google Webmaster Tools so it knows what pages are important and try to crawl those pages.
- HTML Suggestions: The suggestions cover meta tags, title tags and non-indexable content. Understanding the problems here and fixing them could improve your site's searchability and optimization.
- Change of Address: If you move your site's domain to another, using Google's Change of Address speeds up Google's update so it reflects the change.
- Messages: At the top of the left-hand menu is "Messages," which now lets you forward messages to your email account. This way you receive site issue updates as soon as they arrive instead of when you get around to visiting Google Webmaster Tools.
Other Resources for Google Webmaster Tools
Visit Google Webmaster Tools at www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ and its official Webmaster Central Blog at googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com. Google Webmaster Central Channel has a YouTube collection of videos providing tips and tricks.
Also, whatever tool you're reviewing, Google provides links related to the topic for further reading and help. Or you can visit Google Webmasters Help at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/?hl=en.
For Further Reading